The Small Town Sea

by Anees Salim

English 1 edition

ANEES SALIM ‘A haunting portrait of a family caught in death’s long shadow’ INDIAN EXPRESS ‘A Swami and Friends suitable for the darkness of the 21st century combined with an Indian response to that eternal growing-up classic, The Catcher in the Rye’ THE HINDU SHORTLISTED FOR THE HINDU PRIZE FOR BEST FICTION 2017 Uprooted from a bustling city, the thirteen-year-old protagonist of The Small-town Sea is replanted in his father’s home town where he struggles to cope with his new life. He reluctantly makes friends with Bilal, a boy who lives in the orphanage run by the local mosque. Together, they embark on clandestine adventures while his ailing father-a writer whose last wish is to die listening to the sea he has grown up by-rediscovers people from his childhood. But his father’s death unsettles the boy’s life again, and he finds himself grappling with altogether unexpected challenges. ‘Reminds one of E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India, where the most ordinary becomes extraordinary through the writer’s craft’ INDIA TODAY ‘Anees Salim knows how to tell a story … A novel of haunting quality… Unputdownable’ TIMES OF INDIA ‘With The Small-town Sea, Anees Salim has produced one of the most subtle tragedies in Indian fiction in English’ MINT ‘Anees Salim has evolved as a true chronicler of our times’ OUTLOOK